New York Islanders star Matthew Schaefer is making a point to keep his beloved mother’s memory alive after she lost her battle with breast cancer.
Jennifer Schaefer died in February 2024, just over a year before Matthew, 19, was selected by the Islanders with the first overall pick in the 2025 NHL Draft. She was 56.
“As time goes on, it never gets easier,” Matthew exclusively told Us. “You just find different ways to grieve. You talk to different people and you see how they went through things. At the end of the day, no one’s alone. We’re all in this fight together.”
Along the way, Matthew has learned that “everybody grieves differently.”
“For me, I found that I want to talk about my mom,” he said. “To just tell everybody about the person she was for those who weren’t able to experience being in a room with her. You should remember the happy memories. You can’t just look at the last few weeks leading to her passing because it’s not fun to remember. She wasn’t herself with everything she had to go through.”
Matthew recalled how his mother’s cancer didn’t slow her down, especially when it came to being an active hockey mom for him and his older brother, Johnny.
“Even during the tough times when she was going through cancer, she’d still want to do anything to make our family happy,” he said. “She would try and get up while she was going through treatments and things like that. I was like, ‘No, Mom, you gotta rest.’ But she always put her family before her. She’d do anything to keep us happy.”
Matthew continued, “She always had a smile on her face. Her laugh was the best laugh ever. The loudest laugh. You could be in the next subdivision over and hear her laugh from a mile away. It was awesome. She was the best person.”
On Monday, November 2, Matthew unveiled the Jennifer Schaefer Child Support Center at Northwell’s R.J. Zuckerberg Cancer Center in New York’s Lake Success. Funded by a $150,000 gift from the Islanders Children’s Foundation, the hockey-themed room gives kids a place to play, laugh and find support while their parent undergoes cancer treatment, complete with personal messages from Matthew.
“My mom would be super honored to have her name on a room,” Matthew told Us. “I know she’s always with us every step of the way. She’ll be such a big part of that room and its spirit, helping all the kids and families that come through.”
He continued, “I think the coolest thing is, when families are going through treatments, kids can come into this room and they can see a therapist or they can just be a kid and play games. Hopefully it feels like they’re nowhere near a hospital.”
Every child who enters the Jennifer Schaefer Child Support Center will leave with a bracelet with a ladybug on it — for a very special reason.
“I saw a lot of ladybugs when my mom passed,” Matthew explained. “It will have my number on it and Islanders colors, just to show every kid and family that passes through that room that I will always play for them. Me and my family will always be with them.”
